Dark Tales and Slices of Flesh Make Stoker Finals

Not an Oscar.

What a pleasure to get home last night to the news that not one but two anthologies I was in last year have made the finalist list for the 2013 Bram Stoker awards - those being Eric Guignard's Dark Tales of Lost Civilizations and Stan Swanson's flash collection Slices of Flesh.  I raise my imaginary hat (a trilby, only with a nice, jauntily angled Robin Hood-style feather in it) to them both, but Eric gets a little extra hat-tipping since Dark Tales was his editorial debut.  How many editors can lay credit to a Stoker nomination straight off the bat?

I probably can't take a great deal of credit for their success; then again, as Eric was nice enough to point out on Facebook, at least I clearly pick good projects.  So, editors take note: it's perfectly possible that inviting me into your anthology will statistically increase your likelihood of being nominated for a major industry award.  Well, it can't hurt to try, right?

Anyhow, in the interests of balance, here's the full list of finalists.  May the best book win!*

• Mort Castle and Sam Weller - Shadow Show (HarperCollins) 
• Eric J. Guignard - Dark Tales of Lost Civilizations (Dark Moon Books) 
• Eric Miller - Hell Comes to Hollywood (Big Time Books) 
• Mark C. Scioneaux, R. J. Cavender and Robert S. Wilson - Horror for Good: A Charitable Anthology (Cutting Block Press) 
• Stan Swanson - Slices of Flesh (Dark Moon Books) 

 
* So long as it's one of the two I was in, obviously.

Whatever You Do, Don't Do the Twist

My story A Twist Too Far is out in Andromeda Spaceways issue 56 ... which just so happens to be their special, extra big 10 year anniversary issue.  10 years!  That's a loooong time for a magazine, especially in these wacky economic climes.  So paper hats off to the ASIM collective, who've pulled off something extraordinary and deserve all the spaceship cake they can eat.

A Twist Too Far is my third story to grace the pages of Australia's finest genre magazine.  It's a little bit Lovecraftian, a little bit Conan Doyle, and maybe there's a drop of The Prestige in there too, come to think of it ... what with it being about competing contortionists and all.  Why aren't there more horror stories about contortionists?  Contortionists are scary.  I mean, not as scary as gnomes, but not so far off.  They bend their bodies into shapes that human bodies aren't supposed to bend into, for fun and profit.  How is that not ideal fodder for a horror story?  And yet I've never come across another one. So, who knows, maybe I've written the definitive contortionist horror story.  Hey, stranger things have happened, and it certainly creeps the hell out of me.

And also some other people, hopefully, since A Twist Too Far has made it onto the reading list for the HWA's Stoker awards.  Sure would be nice to get nominated for a Stoker!  In the meantime, I'm taking comfort from the fact that not only have I somehow managed to get longlisted, two anthologies I have stories in - Dark Tales of Lost Civilisations and Slices of Flesh, both from Dark Moon Books - are on there too.

Bards and Sage, Some Zombies and Dying

Yes, it may seem like a horribly contrived post title, not to mention a lousy pun, but look past those minor imperfections and you'll see that, with a little assistance from those goofy funsters Simon and Garfunkel, I've perfectly summed up two fairly disparate bits of news into one punchy headline.  You get it now, right?  No?  Possibly you're reading the words in the wrong order or something.  Try squinting.  Maybe rub your stomach a little.

Or ... wait ... perhaps it would make more sense if I actually wrote what the post was about?  That could work.  Well, the first part refers to the fact that my A Stare From the Darkness came out just recently in Bards and Sages Quarterly - a fact cleverly hidden by their website, which doesn't seem to have been updated since the mid-nineties.  Stare is another of my older, much-redrafted stories; turning three pages of flashback into two lines of dialogue was one of those weird "oh, so that's how you do it," moments that come along every so often in writing.  It's about monsters real and created, mixed up with some of the anthropology theory I picked up during my MA on 17th century witchcraft and a fair bit of Hammer Horror.  Actually, its original, even clunkier title of A Stare From the Void and the overly-quoted Nietzsche blurb it's ripped from gives a good idea of what it's about.

As for the bit about zombies and dying, that's obviously a reference to the fact that the Slices of Flesh anthology came out a week or two ago, with my Wetback amongst the absolutely mammoth list of flash stories contained therein.  The line-up for this one is just staggering, with so many big names that I can't bring myself to pick any particular ones out, it's got a Mike Mignola and Dave Stewart cover and the proceeds are going to various literacy charities, so I feel really good about recommending it.

Right, there we go.  Bards and Sage ... that's almost the name of the magazine, yes?  And then the "some zombies and dying"?  That's a reference to Wetback, in which there are zombies and a load of people get horribly killed.  And if you read it really quickly and squint, it sort of sounds a bit like "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme", right?  You know, the song?  It's a pun ... or perhaps more accurately, a play on words.

Although, now that I think about it, possibly not a very good one.

Second Commission, Now With Added Brains

I mentioned a few posts back that I had my first story commission recently, when editor Eric Guignard approached me about his forthcoming Dark Tales of Lost Civilisations anthology.  In that post, I also kind of hinted at the fact that, almost straight away afterwards, I was approached by another editor with a whole 'nother request for my work.  Then I left the whole thing hanging on bit of an artificial cliffhanger, maybe striving for a sense of tension that wasn't entirely there or just bemusedly trying to draw a lengthy post to some sort of close.  Who can say?

Well ... me, obviously.  The truth is, I was being deliberately vague because, although said publisher had asked me for a contribution, they hadn't actually seen what I'd come up with.  And it was entirely possible that I'd send them my story and they'd never, ever, ever be in touch again, perhaps blocking my e-mail address just to be on the safe side.  Or else write back blaming me for the break-up of their marriage.  Or reveal that the whole thing had been some vicious and spectacularly mistimed April Fools joke.

In a pleasantly surprising fashion, none of those things have happened.  So here, belatedly, are the details I held back (or didn't know because they were about to happen in the future) in that last post.

Almost literally straight after me and Eric hashed out the last details for The Door Beyond the Water, and just after Eric let me know that the collection had been picked up by indie horror press Dark Moon Books, I got another e-mail - this one from Stan Swanson, editor and publisher at Dark Moon.  Coincidence?  Whatever the opposite is of a coincidence?  I have no idea.  All I know is, Stan was writing to know if I might be interested in putting forward a story for Dark Moon's forthcoming Slices of Flesh anthology.

You just know that's not going to be a compilation of soul-searching romantic novellas, don't you? And that's probably a good thing, because I have absolutely none of those lying around.  (Well, okay, one.  But I'm saving that for the day Mills and Boon come knocking.)  No, what Stan was after was horror flash fiction.

Only, it was a little more interesting than that.  First of all, Stan happened to mention in that initial e-mail is that he'd already picked up a bunch of very big names.  I'm not sure how many of these are meant to be public knowledge yet, so I'll hold fire on the full compendium of famousness - but even at that early point, some true celebrities of horror had thrown their hats in with Stan. Reason being?  Well, aside from the fact that horror flash fiction is a basically good thing, it probably has a lot to do with the fact that all proceeds from Slices of Flesh will be going to charity - with, the last I heard, the main beneficiary being the Literary Project of America.

But there's one more thing.  And it's a thing that would have sold me on the project all by itself.  The cover artist for this prospective anthology?  It's Mike Mignola.  Now, normally when I namecheck someone, I'd give a bit of a bio for those who've somehow missed their work.  But honestly, if you don't know who Mike Mignola is then you just plain should.  Click on the link.  Seriously.  I'm not even asking here.

Oh, and my story?  It's the (maybe a bit too) provocatively named Wetback.  It has zombies.  If you've been following my work even slightly over the last few years, you've probably noticed I have a soft spot for writing the walking dead.  I think this one's a little different though, what with the zombie being the main protagonist and all.  Not a new idea I know, but I'm still hoping this is a take that hasn't exactly been seen before.

And it's going to be behind a Mike Mignola cover.

Squee.